Michael Burnham has a new captain for only a few hours before she's rocketing through space to save his life, lest another one dies on her watch. Frankly, it's irritating. Captain Christopher Pike beams onto Discovery with a high-priority mission, a science officer who is (1) not her brother and (2) an ass – not that said ass deserved to die, but still – and a surprisingly disarming way of gaining the trust of Discovery's beleaguered crew.
Then she tells him her name, and he looks at her, this soft, fond thing like he's known her for years, and the beauty of it takes her breath away.
Something shifts in her with that one look. Something that says, oh, there you are. How can you feel relief finding something you never knew you were missing?
Michael chooses not to dwell on it.
Instead, she does not flinch when the Captain is frustrated, yelling, and going from charismatic to enraged. She stands her ground and makes her case. It's who she is.
She convinces him.
Then he's willing to die, so she and Nhan don't, and Michael simply will not permit it. Before she knows it, she's doing complex calculations on the fly and relying on Owo and Detmer to keep them both from being nothing more than liquid remains on the surface of an asteroid. She grabs for Captain Pike and holds him to her as they spin and spin and spin, yelling and groaning at the G-forces, Keyla counting down in their ears.
They make it.
An hour later, Michael screams in pain, molten hot tritanium impaling her thigh. The asteroid shakes around her as it gets pulled closer to the pulsar, and she is nearly delirious with pain, unable to discern a clear way out. Then all she sees is beautiful red, and she thinks she's dying.
Then he runs out of the smoke to save her, and Michael thinks, no one has saved me in a long time.
Later, after the Captain grants her permission to go aboard his ship, he smiles at her, all boyish and charming, and it should not work, but it does. He tells her they're going to ruffle some feathers and have fun, and the human side of her marvels that it's the best invitation she's had in years.
There's something wildly compelling about him, and Michael hates it. She feels it keenly walking Discovery's hallways when they speak about her brother and his leave-taking. She can't help but notice the Captain's remorse, longing, and regret as he stares out a portside window at the Enterprise.
She goes straight to him when she returns from the Enterprise, calling the computer for his location before she is even off the transporter pad. She passes Detmer and Owo in the halls, and they invite her to the mess for a midnight snack, but she declines, intent on briefing the Captain immediately. She clutches her brother's tablet to her chest like a shield, something precious that no one can look at.
No one on this ship knows her brother as well as Captain Pike. Arguably, he knows Spock better than anyone in their family at this point. She knows Amanda – Mother – tries to speak with him regularly, but Pike, they serve together, and he is her brother's Captain. They see each other daily and were in deep space together on their five-year mission. When Captain Pike speaks of him, Michael can hear his love for her brother and their comradeship.
Michael feels then shame keenly, what she did to her brother, why they didn't speak. She wonders briefly what will happen when the truth comes out when her mother and Captain learn what she did to sever her and Spock's relationship. Her mother, surely, will be furious. As for Captain Pike – Michael's not so sure about that. She knows he respects her; she thinks they could have been friends in another life. Another universe, something in her whispers, and she dismisses it.
As a xenoanthropologist, she understands faith and religion's importance in society. Being raised on Vulcan, the daughter first of scientists, then of the Vulcan Federation Ambassador, Michael was raised to be a person of logic, of science. She believed in what she could see, things that evidence, data, and facts could support. She had always quietly shaken her head – never outwardly, that would have been impolite – at people who believed in a higher power, for whom faith was important.
However, as a human raised on Vulcan, she finds the idea of organized religion, of having faith in a higher power whose existence cannot be proven, so utterly preposterous that the entire time they're on Terralysium, she is unsettled.
She mostly takes it out on the Captain, and he lets her with quiet understanding and compassion. He takes her ideas, her disbelief, her suspicions, and calmly sorts through them and makes his calls.
She ignores how he stares at her across the flames and how the firelight makes him more attractive. Michael does her best to ignore the tug in her gut at the admiration in his eyes, at how well he fits among the people of New Eden and seems to understand their devotion in a way she never will.
She ignores how close he stands when he speaks to her, the thrill that zings through her when he's so close she can feel his breath on her skin. Even with Ash, her body wasn't drawn to him the way she is to the Captain, how she feels like she's always aware of where he is and knows when he's looking at her.
He's always looking at her.
He is her commanding officer, her brother's friend, and on a temporary assignment. She is a mutineer and the instigator of the Klingon war, the orphan who got her parents killed so she could watch a supernova, and a sister who destroyed a little boy's humanity and called it love.
She is Discovery's science officer, and he is the Captain. He gives orders, and she follows them, as it should be.
In a way, it feels like her time on the Shenzhou with Captain Georgiou – the good-natured teasing, and challenging her Captain's ideas. That all feels the same. Her relationship with Georgiou was definitely that of a mentor and mentee; some even called Georgiou's affections maternal.
Michael knows she doesn't want any parental feelings from Captain Pike – and that is something she will not investigate for anything in the universe.
As the human saying goes, he wears his faith on his sleeve proudly and quietly. The Tilly that apparently lives in Michael's mind also wants to comment on what else he is wearing, but she does her best to shoo those thoughts away. Still, it's fascinating – the reverence nearly bleeds out of his pores when they're in the church and at the welcome ceremony. It's beautiful, even as it perplexes. Despite her best efforts to remain detached and scientific, the warmth in his voice when he thanks the All-Mother, how he knows just what to say at the end of the rite – it tugs at Michael's belly.
Then he goes and blows himself up to save a child's life.
She has the worst luck with Captains.